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Trip: Cascade River Road - Forbidden, Spider, Boston, and many more solo Trip Date: 08/11/2025 Trip Report: Went up to Cascade River Road for the past couple days to take advantage of the good weather. Didn’t have a partner so just decided to mess around for a while. Apparently my adult friends do this thing called work. Who does that! Summits were: Forbidden, Boston, Sahale, Magic, Arts, Formidable, Spider, Little Devil, Devil Benchmark, Teebone Ridge. Thursday 8/7 Dropped my mom off at work before heading north, got there around 11. Pretty cloudy and had big plans for the next few days so I just ran up to little devil peak and copy climber kyle. Bagged Teebone ridge and Devil benchmark along the way. Enjoyed some perfect huckleberries on the way up. Startled a large bear on the way down, only 25 feet from me. The fur was brown but I don’t think there are any grizzlies out there so who knows. Friday 8/8 Arose at sunrise and moving at 6am up to Cascade pass with 3 days of food, went over the cache glacier and saw a black bear on the other side of the col. This time we saw each other and maintained distance. Slogged it over to the other side of the middle cascade glacier where I got to the bottom of that South-facing gully around 1. Went up Spider mountain using the left gully at first before gaining the rib between the two. Got back to the ptarmigan traverse trail around 5 where I worked my way over to the access col to formidable for a nice night. Saturday 8/9 Arose once again at sunrise and climbed formidable in the morning in 4 hours camp to camp. Saw another party coming up as I headed down from the col. Slogged it back up to the middle cascade and felt pretty pooped by the time I got to the red ledges. Dropped the pack and scurried up Art’s Knoll. After that headed over to kool-aid lakes where I stashed a lot of gear before going up Spider. Made it back down around 6 or 7 before more slogging up to cache col for a sweet bivy site. Spilled my pad thai all over myself which I was unhappy about. Sunday 8/10 Another sunrise wakeup got me moving at 6, down to cascade pass, and up to Sahale where I summited around 11:30. Stashed overnight gear on my way up to the arm. Always fun passing people in trailrunning vests. Simply buying an vest and some poles won’t make you kilian jornet, still need cardio. Anyways, over to Boston where I topped out around 12 or 12:15? Explored the summit register before rappelling down. Yes I did carry a 60m purline all that way for 2 rappels. Training weight or something. Cruised it back to the car. Monday 8/11 Had to meet a neighbor in the evening to talk about watering his plants but nothing else going on. Also had a dentist on Tuesday preventing me from staying another day. Soloed up W. ridge Forbidden in 4:15 car to summit. Topped out around 7:15 before heading down at 8 with another soloist from Montana. Rope was nice for rappels. Back at the car by 12:30, home around 3:30. I guess I could’ve waken up later. Don’t see myself becoming some big free-soloist but the route seemed like a good option for it. Sure is nice to not fuss with ropes through easy terrain. Gear Notes: Approach shoes and Crampons would work for everything. I carried boots because I like carrying things I regret carrying later. Rapping boston feels good and a purline doesnt weigh much. Approach Notes: Forbidden can be reached without touching any snow

Trip: Eldorado zone tour, with EMS - South and west ridges of Eldorado, SW face of Early Morning Spire Trip Date: 08/08/2025 Trip Report: Got to do some routes in the Eldorado neighborhood from a base camp last weekend. This was another trip I’ve been meaning to do for a long time where the pieces finally fell into place. Climbed with Ben who has learned quickly in the three years since he started climbing. Solid partner, his only real error was leaving glasses back at the car. On the first day this was mitigated with some tmnt Inuit tech. Cowabunga! Luckily at camp there was a climber who elected to stay there while his guided team climbed the E ridge. Heard the guide had extra shades and we arranged to borrow them for the weekend. Sky harp We set off for the south ridge. I love knife edges so found the route just barely in the worth doing once category. If you don’t particularly enjoy knife edges there’s no reason to do this climb. Unincorporated choss county Some fun atmospherics helped make it somewhat enjoyable despite some of the worst quality rock I’ve climbed. We counted it as good mental prep for W arete the next day. At the end of our three hour tour camp to camp we arrived to find the guide-lended glasses waiting for us. Most of the rock climbing in the next two days was in the shade, but this was still quite the score. Got up early the next day for the W arete and kind of raced another party departing camp right after us. There turned out to be a third party on the route that day too (!) Below Dorado Needle col we saw tracks through a snow bench above and left of the tarn, and followed these around to slabs near the sit start of the route. We misjudged the heathery path from below. What looked fine turned out to be dirty, crumbly, overly narrow and exposed, with mostly down sloping rock and dirt. This was a bit of a traverse coming from the NW to the ridge around 6700-6800’. Not at all recommended, there must be a better way, maybe more directly from the west? The other two parties took the considerably higher entrance from snow that bypasses all the green stuff, which seems more appealing in retrospect, though it looks like it has a bit of hazard too (steep, bad runouts). We were glad to be in front. There was one particularly thunderous episode of rock fall accompanied by muffled shouts and we were relieved to eventually see all 5 climbers back at camp that evening. After pulling through some legitimately scary terrain we soloed up briefly sound rock before it got questionable again. Then we started to simul. I think two blocks got us into the gendarmes. We had climbed up a chimney to a piton, but it didn’t look anything like photos of the crux traverse. After some confusion we saw another piton down below and realized we were above that crux. We rapped past it. It looks exciting, kinda wish we climbed it. Unintentionally mimicking the rocks’ posture From there two more blocks got us past the snow into lower angle terrain where we unroped. I found mostly pretty good stuff to the summit. The path of least resistance isn’t always the best path. It was so early I proposed heading back down for the SW buttress of Dorado Needle but we elected to rest up for EMS instead. With the south ridge the day before, the west arete completed the Eldorado compass for me (north and of course east ridges climbed before). South ridge! meh I enjoyed solitude on the summit for a while and left as a large group of sunburned youth neared the top. The hours drifted lazily by. We chatted with various day trippers throughout the afternoon. Next morning another early start had us retracing our steps to Dorado col. Celestial choss, earthly choss This time we passed by the tarn and its outlet stream. One slope looked inviting but it cliffed out on the other side. Proceeding lower we found a nice path through trees to cross the ridge with friendly heather downclimbing. EMS presents quite the striking mien all along the approach. We met someone at camp the night before who had his own route beta for EMS which he shared with us. Compared to Nelson’s it had a direct start, and above that, more of a diversion to the right and back left, rather than straight up. Both of these variations turned out to be good calls. The start was a little tricky in terms of climbing and pro. First piece The climbing quickly got to be really fun. After about 70m I took the lead. After scoping a more direct line I tried the shallow right facing corner diversion to the right, and was pretty delighted with this section. I think this wide low angle splitter was in this pitch. I stopped about 70m later just below the ledge below the crux roof. Ben took over again and dispatched the slightly wet moves and drifted out of sight. This pitch ended up maybe 80m with a little simuling to the slab under to the roof. As I followed pitch 3 the rope hung over some excellent mid 5th friction slabs, where Ben had fortunately not placed pro. I took these optional sections (easier ledges around) to make the pitch even better (out of frame right of this photo). Pitch 4 was another rope stretcher with quality stone and low-mid 5th climbing. Ben took off again and neared the ridge crest. He selected a scruffy 5.10 chimney to get us to the slab and stopped there. I got to lead the finger traverse above this slab, another route highlight. I crossed the crest and continued up it, placing hardly anything, mostly focused on keeping the trailing rope from crossing the abundant choss that now sadly replaced the excellent rock. A seventh rope stretcher got us near to the summit ridge. We did one more short pitch that turned out to be unnecessary, should have unroped after 7. Tempered expectations may have been a factor, but we reveled in how good this route turned out to be. It’s not Stuart range classic quality but I think it’s up there with some three-four star WA pass routes, with an obviously much more engaging approach and return than you can find there. Our descent began with sandy goat ledges on the south side of the ridge. When this cliffed out we crossed back north. It was very exposed here with a deep moat below, but with bomber easy staircase rock leading down. There was one low 5th body length, an awkward long step and then we were at the moat. The gap was significant but absolutely doable. Still got high dive butterflies before finally making the leap. When Ben’s turn came he sprang from both feet, launching far beyond the gap and came skating into me lol. The hypothetical descent to the south had looked atrocious during the approach, and there is at least one epic going that way documented here on cc. We instead followed the advice to climb snow to the choss saddle north of marble peak. At the crest we saw rather steep snow to the east, so followed the snow up and south to get a look around. This passed so close to the summit we thought we might as well tag it. Took rock down here to bypass the steep snow. I scouted south while Ben scouted north. We never found existing anchors, so when a good crack on the north end below the steep snow presented itself we set an anchor and rapped down. 70m easily made it, might have been 25m or so. Next we crossed the McAllister, almost exactly matching my track from 3 years ago (snow levels early August this year look even lower than early September 2022). Having decided to skip our last night out, we zipped over to camp where we packed up, ate dinner, and quickly hiked down, getting past the boulders and close to the bottom before pulling the head lamps out. The dip in the creek at the end was extremely necessary and welcome in a dumbfounding sort of way. Gear Notes: Doubles 0.3 to 1, single 2 and 3. Some C3s and nuts. Ax and crampons. 70m rope. Radios were very useful for our long pitch strategy on EMS. Approach Notes: Counter clockwise

Howdy friends, it's my pleasure to present you all with the newest Washington classic - Negligence located off the Hannegan pass trail. This is a stellar line that links up several crack systems to access a shield about halfway up the large buttress seen across the valley. We spent most of the spring/summer of 2025 developing and cleaning this line and would like nothing more than people to get out there and climb the thing. Approach - From the Hannegan Pass Trailhead, hike Hannegan Pass Trail past the first two switchbacks about halfway to the campsites. Shortly after the second switchback, drop down the open talus field on your right. Continue down the talus almost to the creek, cut right into the woods, then make your way down to the creek from there. Jump from a large log across the first narrow creek band and you’ve found the tunnel through the slide alder. Be bear aware here, we found multiple fresh signs of them (probably due to the golfball sized salmon berries). Follow this until the major creek crossing, then cross the creek. After crossing, head through the trees directly towards the nose of the buttress, hopping another small creek braid before entering into the talus for the final approach. Follow cairns up the talus, then follow the path (likely overgrown) through the underbrush to the base of the wall. The route is located a couple hundred feet to the right of the nose. In total, the approach is around 2 miles, but tends to take around 45 minutes, give or take. Climb - This route takes a series of remarkable crack systems 400 feet up the Hannegan Buttress over four pitches. Protection is traditional, styles vary from off-width to tips, and all anchors are bolted for ease of descent (316SS all around). Each pitch ends at a conferable belay ledge. Pitch 1 - Depending on snowpack, either hop right into the offwidth start, or cross a deep snowfield to dig right into the rest of the pitch. A long continuous crack system varies from tight fingers to the wide stuff, favoring tight hands and good feet. This pitch reminds me of a steeper version of the Apron with lots of flared hands, sustained 5.9 climbing with several good rests. The bottom wide bit is a little dirty and will probably remain so since it gets buried under the snow pack, but it quickly cleans up. This pitch would be a classic all on its own. (5.9+) Pitch 2 - Amble up from the belay towards a notch gully in the leftward wall, clipping in a pin down low, then placing a bit of gear before firing a few fun moves to gain the gully. Make your way up the 4th class to a great ledge to top out this short pitch. (5.8) Pitch 3 - Step left from the belay and begin climbing up a wide box. Tread lightly on the red stone before pulling into the right-facing dihedral towards the alcove. Exit the alcove on thin tips, and continue upwards until bomber hands placements allow you the confidence to trend left in the flake system. Follow the flakes until the roof, then brace yourself for a thin, thoughtful, arching crux protected by small gear as you pull out onto the Shield. Save a .2 and your smallest cam for the business. The crux of this pitch is short and sweet. Its probably easier for folks with thin fingers or long arms and can easily be pulled through on gear. (5.10d) Pitch 4 - This one's in the money for best pitch in all of Washington! Climb the stupendous splitter to the top of the Shield. It is as good as it looks. Some finger crack moves will take you past a loose book size rock (never fear, that thing isn't coming out) to glorious hand jams. It gets a little steeper at the top so be sure to take in the scenery and catch your breath a bit. Top out on a large ledge. (5.10b) Descent: Rap with a single 70m rope. Use the intermediate anchor on the ledge climbers left between the P1 anchor and the ground. Otherwise, just rap the route. Gear - 70m rope Double rack .2 - 3. Singles of 4, .1, and a purple c3 (or equivalent tiny cam, or trango gold ballnut… the best option) to protect the crux. Wires, all sizes. Consider triples in .4 and .5 for the long first pitch and a 5 if offwidths make you shake. Background - The vision and much of the labor for this route came from Nate Fearer with additional help from myself, Neil Miller, Spencer Moore and Alex Pederson. The route name comes from the fact that Nate started this project while on paternity leave and completed it within the first four months of his son's life (he really is a good father and loving husband). The route was established ground up as an aid line, then dug, cleaned, and scrubbed. Then scrubbed, then scrubbed, then scrubbed. Further ascents will clean it even more. Also, we found some evidence of prior development out there including a bolted (2 pitch?) line left of the nose. If anyone has information on this route please let me know.

Sperry Peak – NE Ridge On August 3 Gabe and I climbed the NE ridge of Sperry Peak. Due to low clouds, we had about ~100ft of visibility until we reached 5000ft. As a result, we generally stayed near the crest of the ridge, being unable to see if moving left or right would be advantageous. Given that, our experience of the route could be substantially different from prior or future parties. We suspect that some (but not all) of the more unsavory portions of the route we climbed could be avoided with better route finding. The upper half of the route has some of the best ridge scrambling I have done in the cascades, including a spectacular section of knife edge ridge on good rock with great gear. However, on the bottom half of the route, gear is sparse and it is advisable to make an offering to the veggie gods before your ascent as many pitches are vertical bushwhacking requiring the climber to put full faith into a wide array of plant species to make upward progress. On one particularly memorable pitch I took a breather while standing on a curved cedar branch hanging several feet out from the rock before lay backing up the rest of the branch to reach a belay. For the route we climbed, a modern grade of 5.8R seems about right. Car to car we took approximately 16 hours. Overall, the rock was surprisingly solid (when you were touching it) and we didn’t experience any runout hard moves. For climbers interested in getting a bit off the beaten path with a tolerance for schwacking (both horizontally and vertically), I recommend the route. Approach: Following Beckey we took the Sunrise Mine trail to ~3100 feet and then started contouring north. After a too short and pleasant section of fern bashing, we quickly dove into steep dense jungle. Several cliff bands pushed us downhill toward the top of the slabs with the waterfall you see from the trail. Unfortunately this way doesn’t go, so we turned around and followed a cliff band uphill until finding a short class 3-4 gully which allowed passage. Continuing to contour we crossed several steep gullies (requiring a bit of luck to find reasonable scrambles to get into the gullies) with running water and a couple sections of class 3-low 5th slab before accessing the ridge from its east side at ~3500ft. If we attempted this route again late in the summer (so the water levels are low) we would consider approaching directly from the car. From satellite images it looks like it would be possible to follow relatively open stream beds to almost the bottom of the ridge. Of course we haven’t tried this approach so no guarantees! In the below picture I marked our approximate ( I cannot emphasize enough how approximate this is) approach in green and the possible alternative approaches mentioned above in red. The parking lot is for the sunrise mine trail is circled with blue. Climb: Hit the ridge and follow your nose. Many options are possible. Descent: Descend the standard Sperry scramble route. Gear Notes: We brought doubles in .4-1, a single .3, 2,3, and one set of nuts. For slings we brought 12 Singles, 4 Doubles. We used a 60M rope. Bring a nut tool to clean out placements. If we were to do the route again, we would bring 6-8 doubles and fewer singles. Lower down on the ridge the larger cams were surprisingly useful. Two 3’s and a 4 would not go unused, though they are not necessary. Final Thoughts: We found a couple pieces of fixed gear. Any of them yours? I would be stoked to hear about other people’s experiences on the route. Has anyone done the northwest ridge? The upper portion of it looks interesting! Pictures: The Fixed Gear: The access gulley on the approach. Many of lower pitches on the ridge were similar to this: Some pictures on the lower half of the ridge: Unbeknownst to me, I picked up a stick while following a pitch: And now some upper ridge pictures!

From July 25-27, Lani Chapko and I climbed the SW ridge of Whatcom peak. This is the large, two-tiered ridge that, at its toe forms the imperfect impass. The ridge gains 2400' with 3000' of roped travel. The ridge is generally not very sustained with the upper half being mostly low fifth class. We did it in 14 pitches or simul blocks. The route climbed on generally very low quality shist and required care and deliberate, slow movement the whole time. Protection was surprisingly good through the lower, challenging climbing, but non-existent at times higher up, forcing very long simul blocks to locate anchors. The route follows the skyline Day 1 We left the Hannegan Pass TH around 2pm and hiked to a camp on the summit of easy peak. Day 2 Finish the easy ridge traverse and drop down to the toe of the ridge. We started just left and uphill of the toe on an obvious ledge. Climb then return via easy pass/imperfect impass back to a camp on the summit of easy peak. NOTE: I bolstered the rap anchor above the second pitch of the impasse and added new tat. There is now a small nut and good KB in addition to the sketchy horn that people had been using. Please do not clean this anchor, this section is about 5.5 and often seeps for long after rains. So it can be nice to have the option to rap. Day 3 Wake up late, and hike out, eating copious berries and taking longer than the approach 😅. Here's some photos of the climb Lani starting up the first real pitch Climbing on one of the lower 5.9 pitches Short overhanging crack crux The broad notch halfway up Easy scrambling above the notch Some cool ridge climbing up high A near gendarme towards the top Another view One more view of the ridge, following the skyline. Gear; Single Rack .1 to 3, doubles .3 to .5; small set of nuts and 3 KB's (used extensively). As always, here are my pitch notes, though id hardly recommend this route. In all seriousness, Castle in the Sky is a bonefide modern classic Cascades alpine route, so if you want to do something technical on Whatcom, you should really just do that! P1 100' 5.3 Climb water polished slabs and grooves to a massive ledge (easy solo). Move (or establish) belay to far right end of the ledge P2 200' 5.8 climb a runout mossy dike to a poor belay stance. P3 200' 5.6 Continue up the moss dike to a big ledge system. Traverse the ledge to the right anc belay just before the massive cleft. P4 100' 5.9 Traverse into the gully, climb the sometimes chossy gully and belay below an overhanging OW in a forming cave. P5 100' 5.10a Steep moves to the right exit the gully. Then steep chossy, but well protected climbing gains a ramp then a ledge to belay. P6 100' 5.10+ Trend up cracks to a tree. Awk moves through the tree gain a small ledge. The crux crack lies above. Steep pumpy climbing with barely ok gear leads to a sloping ledge to belay. P7 200' 5.9 Surprisingly techy climbing above the belay relents to chossy low fifth class on the ridge. Stretch your rope and find a belay. P8 200' low fifth Scramble the ridge to some trees. Scramble a few hundred feet to the base of a gendarme P9 250' 5.5 Scramble up a grassy ramp on the right of the gendarme. Belay at a small saddle. A few hundred feet of 4th class through a massive notch in the ridge. This is a possible bivy site or bail point. Several hundred more feet of scrambling up to low fifth leads to a small notch. P10 300' low fifth Scramble a loose gully to where you can find gear to belay. P11 200' 5.5 Continue up the gully to where the ridge knife edges out. P12 200' 5.4 Climb the knife edge ridge to the next notch. P13 600' 5.5 Continue along the ridge to the base of the summit headwall. P14 200' 5.7 Climb the left side of the headwall to a spot just below the summit, then scramble to the summit.

I did this climb a few weeks ago and my friend did a write up that I thought I’d post here (source https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=2902617). There wasn’t a ton of information on it, but overall a fun way to get up the mountain. Jack Mountain (East Ridge) & Crater Mountain Team: Damon, Jon, Chris Dates: July 11-13, 2025 Short Version: A successful 3-day trip to the seldom-climbed East Ridge of Jack Mountain with Jon. The three of us climb Crater Mountain on the way out. Jack's East Ridge is a long, serious, and committing route with sustained exposure and multiple pitches of 5th-class climbing. It should not be taken lightly. Crater Mountain provided one of the most spectacular summit panoramas in the state, a perfect reward for the intensity of Jack and a supremely appealing scramble objective by itself. Statistics: Total Mileage: ~25 miles Total Elevation Gain: ~12,500 ft Day 1 (Approach to Jerry Lakes Basin): 9 miles, +5400' / -1400', 7h 30m Day 2 (Jack Mtn): 5.8 miles, +/- 4660', 13h 08m Day 3 (Crater Mtn & Exit): 9.7 miles, +2390' / -6420' Full Report Day 1: The Approach Our trip began at the Canyon Creek Trailhead. A quarter-mile in, we hit the ford of Canyon Creek. I was glad to have brought Crocs, which I cached on the far side. From there, the trail winds its way up and up. We left trail at 6400' to ascend towards the 7200' col. We made steady progress under warm skies. After crossing the pass, we descended snow below the Jerry glacier into the beautiful Jerry Lakes basin. We camped near the outlet of the biggest lake, opting to bivy to enjoy the clear night. The area was scenic but quite buggy. Day 2: Jack Mountain - The East Ridge Jon and I set off for Jack early, moving by 4:30, climbing a goat path to exit the Jerry Lakes basin. As we reached the col, we saw Jack partially shrouded in a high cloud around 8,000 ft. From there, our route involved descending 800 feet into the adjacent basin before beginning the ascent up the SE arm of Jack. We then traversed over to the snowfield below the glacier, which led to a few hundred feet of scrambling to gain the East Ridge proper at 7,200 ft. The East Ridge itself is a magnificent and fiercely serious undertaking. This is not a casual scramble. The route involved three distinct pitches of 5th-class climbing: one up a gully early on, a memorable and wildly exposed 5.0 crux in the middle of the ridge, and another section to gain the summit. Jon, whose extensive experience was essential to our success, led these pitches and found ok placements. The true character of the ridge, however, lies in the terrain between the technical pitches. We spent hours moving together on exposed Class 3 and 4 rock, requiring sustained concentration. The summit, while somewhat cloudy, still offered stellar views of Baker, Shuksan, the Pickets, Ross Lake, Hozomeen, and the massive Nohokomeen Glacier sprawling below. We also took a moment to look down at the upper part of the South Face route; it looked unappealing, reinforcing our choice of the East Ridge. The descent was a mirror of the ascent: a long, mentally taxing exercise in precision. For the 5.0 crux, Jon employed a protected downclimbing system, providing a crucial safety margin. The opening move where I had to blindly face-in downclimb over a bulge to find footholds to enter a solid crack system, with 1000' of air down to snow far below, was totally insane even with a few pieces of protection that Jon placed below me. We made one rappel lower down off an established tat anchor. We were so happy to be off the East Ridge, but proud that we made it work. We tried to stay on snow to cross the glacial basin. As we walked over, a 20-foot snow finger near the glacier toe collapsed in front of us onto the rock. It was a powerful reminder of objective hazards and the unknowable elements of alpinism that defy simple analysis. We turned and went back the scramble way The 13-hour day was a testament to the route's length and complexity. We made it to camp by late afternoon. The East Ridge is a route for self-reliant parties with a deep well of experience in technical rock, rope systems, and managing risk in a remote, high-consequence environment. Day 3: Crater Mountain & The Exit We awoke to a beautiful morning with interesting cloud formations. All three of us made the climb up Crater Mountain. The route involved fun Class 3 scrambling with some light exposure and a single, unexposed Class 4 move. The rock was loose in places, so I was happy to have a helmet. The summit of Crater Mountain is, without exaggeration, one of the finest viewpoints in Washington State—perhaps even better than Jack's. The 360-degree panorama under clear skies was staggering. It offered the same incredible views of the major Cascade peaks, but with the added bonus of a stunning perspective of Jack's massive South Face and the beautiful Jerry Lakes basin below. After soaking in the views for an hour, we descended and began the long hike out. The descent went quickly as we talked about Star Wars and the Matterhorn. The river crossing was downright enjoyable in the heat. A challenging, humbling, and ultimately magnificent trip to a wild corner of the Cascades.

Background: This is a trip report for the frostbite ridge of glacier peak. WHo was there? Me (the slab doctor), the anchorman, and capt. Kirk himself. In yearly tradition we go climb something every summer. Unfortunately the final disciple (Professor Science) was unable to make the trip due to life choices outside of his own comprehension. Day 1: after getting to the North Fork Sauk trailhead somewhat late in the afternoon, the disciples hiked up to the PCT and then down slightly to camp in the large bowl just below the ridge. stats: 11.5 miles and 4.8k gain Day 2: We slept in and hauled butt down to the Kennedy creek crossing. we had heard that you must actually wade to get across this but it was no issue for us to cross on logs. We then started the climb up to glacier creek and left the PCT there. Shortly after leaving the PCT we were at the toe of the kennedy glacier (3:45 pm?). There is a nice bivvy site here. We decided to attempt to make it up to the bivvy at 8.8k. Going up the side of the Kennedy was horrendous work. Large patches of glacial till/mud, exposed blue ice, and loose gravel made for tedious going. We made it to 8.8k camp at 7:30/8pm ish and were all pretty kicked in at this point. The bivvy was one of the best I have had, a beautiful inversion left us above the clouds with stunning views of Baker, Shuksan, and the North Cascades. Unfortunately the anchorman had the piles & was shitting a lot over the last 2 days. There are 2 flat spots for tents at the 8.8k site, but only 1 of them has a substantial rock circle. I would highly recommend not sharing this route with other parties for this reason, and for the significant choss hazards on the ridge that arise late season. stats: 12 miles and 5k gain Day 3: We were going by 7:30/8am up towards the rabbit penis on what I can only describe as some of the worst choss of my life. We were kicking down serious amounts of rockfall, I'm talking 4 or 5 basketball sized rocks at a time that would not stop and continue off the ridge until they were out of sight. Again I would really not want to be behind another party on this route, unless there was significantly more snow. After going tucking around to climbers right the rabbit peen we got on a short section of steep snow and then a cool sidewalk with significant exposure above the upper kennedy. We gained the ridge again after the sidewalk and crossed over to the other side. Here we went almost between the rabbit ears, and after spotting a cairn on the other side of the ridge we down climbed and began the short up and down section before the final ice pitches.IMG_3263.HEIC The ice was pretty trivial and we probably could have soloed all of it but out of an abundance of caution we pitched out the lower section. We then de-roped and simul soloed the final 100 ft of snice / steep snow. If you stay to the right side you will put out exactly below the summit rock jumble. After shmoozing it on the summit with a cool party of climbers from Kerala who offered us whiskey & cigs, we began our mad dash out. Our goal was to make it to the (former) Mackinaw shelter camp site which would leave us with a cool 5 miles to complete monday morning --some of our disciples had work the next day >: ) . We again busted serious ass and were at the shelter by 7pm ish that day?? 15 miles and 3k gain Day 4: an early wake up allowed us to do the 5.5 miles back in about an hour and a half and everyone got to work on time. 5.5 miles and 500ft gain.

you give it all you got, weighing in at 19 stone:

EMS looks awesome! Nice work!

rad!

Wait. There were THREE parties on the West Arete of Eldorado in one day??! I would be surprised if it got climbed 3 times in one year. Interesting. That is a crazy fast amount of climbing in a few days!

Great writeup Jon, so nice getting to climb together this weekend!

Cool trip and nice pics! EMS looks like particularly good rock -- still on the list.

Nice! Link to my report below - cool to see the conditions change throughout the season. https://spokalpine.com/2025/07/21/dakobed-glacier-peak-frostbite-ridge-ii-ai2/

Hi all; Just came across this and joining the conversation 24 years later, lol. The name came from the fact that a Falcon swooped us on the exposed summit ridge. Essentially the last pitch. I am a bit surprised to hear about the less than stellar rock report. I found the rock to be pretty good, but then again, I had a great capacity of kidding myself regarding rock quality at the time. But seriously... What I do remember for sure is that the line was a nice plum line to the top and that the camping the Summit Chief Valley was really amazing. Below is a link to the few photos I was able to find. Jeff Hansel might have some more. https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1cec_PLE8JFHNmJdzzIyb3to_9tNYGgdA

🤣 Great TR. Cool seeing the north side of the mountain get more visitors lately

Trip: Lemah Mountain - via Pete Lake (3rd class) (bike approach) Trip Date: 08/31/2024 Trip Report: I used my five-day Labor Day weekend to bike from my house out past the Pete Lake trailhead to climb Lemah and bike home. I really dislike sitting in traffic, and I like riding my bike, so it made a lot of sense! This was a soul-fulfilling trip with lots of time and space to think, not think, observe, and move across the state and up to the top of a really awesome peak! I won’t bore everyone with ALL the bike details, but here’s my VCB (very capable bike) before leaving home. Ready for adventuring! Day 1 - 9:30am - 3:30pm: ~60 miles by bike. Home to Carter Creek camp on the Palouse to Cascades/John Wayne/Iron Horse trail. Started eating a lot of snacks! Talked with fellow bikepacker Craig from Chinook Pass at camp, he looked at my bike and asked what the ice axe was for. He told me about going into the Stuart Range 30+ years ago, “You could camp ANYWHERE back then!” No going back to those days… Day 2 - 6:45am - 7:30pm: ~55 miles by/with bike, ~2.5 miles on foot. Woke up to my brain singing something I hadn’t heard in probably like 25 years: “Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?” – weird stuff! Soon I was pedaling along the trail singing something like, "Heyyyy wild kitties, today's not the day, leave me alone, I don't wanna play.” Stopped when a Douglas squirrel was harassing me from the side of the trail (a common thread throughout the days) and watched it turn a pinecone over and over in its little hands, gnawing and letting the scales fall away, eating the nuts, then discarding the little corn cob. Amazing! Through the Snoqualmie Pass tunnel, turned north in Easton. Had an unexpected cortado at an espresso stand and resupplied at the gas station, then started up the road leading to (kinda chunky, kinda sustained steep, grindy grindy) forest service road. Finally, doing some real elevation gain! Left some mountain bikers in the dust after asking if I could join their bike gang for the climb. Sorry guys! But then I got to the 2.5 miles of black diamond MTB territory heading north. How do people bike up stuff this steep, and narrow?! I hiked my heavy-ass bike about 97% of this, both uphill and downhill. I knew it would be a lot of HAB for this section, but it was steep and dusty and narrow, full value HAB! Happily, there always seemed to be tons of giant delicious shiny mountain huckleberries whenever I really needed the morale boost. After that, things got a little better with four miles on No Name Ridge which is supposedly a blue square trail – maybe old skool, sandbagged blue square? I liked this Trailforks report: “Do you like pushing your bike uphill, nearly, seemingly, endlessly? Then this is the ride for you!” Definitely rode more than 3% of this section, but still – a good amount of HAB. However! Most of this was on the ridge, so stellar views abound! Lemah, Chimney Rock and Overcoat, The Chiefs, Bears Breast, Hinman, Daniel, and Cathedral Rock! (Stu, too, but out of the frame.) And there were actually some really good flowy sections with nice trail. Stopped and watched/listened to a couple of grouse (maybe mom and one juvenile?) traveling along talking to each other. After what felt like a very long time, I reached the end of the climb and the gravel descent down to Cooper River was AWESOME, smooth and fast. Soon I was at the Pete Lake trailhead filling out my little ALW permit and continuing onward on my bike! You can go about 2.5 miles until the ALW boundary where I made the transition to backpacking mode and stashed my bike in the woods. From there I quickly made my way to Pete Lake (about 2 more miles) and found a truly stellar somewhat secret campsite and settled in for the night. Day 3 - 6:30am - 7:45pm: ~13 miles on foot. Lemah! This was an interesting route that included a lot of slab walking, waterfall slabs, tarns and amazing views everywhere. Beautiful start when you start on the climbers’ trail, next to waterfalls and pools of Lemah Creek. I had to do a little extra gain to get this photo, but you can see the route -- along the right side of the marshy area, up the gully, up most of the snow finger, then traverse across, below the second ridge-toe, then the scramble up to ridgeline, along the ridge, and then up the main summit! Whinnimic Falls on the left: The B2 schwack was not that fun, but could have been worse. The gully was Not Fun. It's a cool canyon, memorable feature, but so much churned up, unsettled rock and sand and all the rest. Going earlier in the season seems like a smart and fun snow climb (bring the skis). I took the snow finger up to around 6100’ and then crossed a few some other snowfields (but could have stayed off if I wanted). I was really happy that there were no real issues with the snow – no weird moats, no difficult transitions, no blue ice that I had to go around or anything. I only saw a couple patches of bare ice and a couple of holes, but I didn’t need to go anywhere near them. And none of the snow was very steep and it was all soft enough for the aluminum crampons on my trail runners (glad I had the axe). Lucked out with the freezing levels being so high during this time! Fun slab walkin' (view of Three Queens and Chikamin I think): Lots of solid and enjoyable scrambling in the upper parts of the mountain (lots of options for 4th class if you wanted it): Final scrambly bits to gain the ridge: : Summit views were incredible! Right next to Chimney Rock and Overcoat. Seeing Burnt Boot Peak, Big Snowy, Chikamin, Huckleberry, Thomson, Stuart, Baker, Shuks, Tahoma…Really amazing. Also, lots of flying ants on the summit! Maybe a reproductive swarm of western thatching ants? For the down-scramble, I had Mista Dobalina stuck in my head. I saw a pika pretty close up, then a marmot pretty close up, lots of grasshoppers. On the way down the gully, I was surprised to see a couple coming up. They were planning to do a loop, not climb anything. I said something about “So is this the obvious gully?” and the dude didn’t get it. Awk. Toward the bottom of the creek where things start to level out, saw a couple of those water birds that do the little squat dance (American Dippers or water ouzels). Amazing birds! And lots of huckleberries again, even a few thimbleberries that were still pretty good. I was going to see if I could bypass all of the alder by just wading through the ponds. Unfortunately the water started getting too deep but for a very serene six or seven minutes I was just wading quietly in this really nice clear water up to about my waist and it was awesome, lots of tall reed-like grass around me, I felt like a water creature. If I had had the ability to make my stuff waterproof I would have loved to have traveled by water and bypassed the schwack. The water was cool and refreshing; a really special moment. Later, closer to the actual trail, I ran into another couple of people. Emily and Sky. They were super friendly. Maybe 10 minutes after that I ran into another couple of people! Both parties were trying to camp up on the beautiful domes above the creek. Day 4 and about half of Day 5 were biking home. Pete Lake trail was more fun on the way out, and then there was an amazing paved descent down to the Cle Elum River valley (shirt dip), an experience of culture shock when I rolled into Roslyn’s Sunday farmers/street market (so loud, so many people), super hot riding the trail back westward (another shirt dip in the Yakima). When I stopped in Issaquah to see if I could see any salmon, I saw two making their way up the creek! A great trip! Gear Notes: Light axe, light pons, at least 6 voile straps Approach Notes: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/47332364